URL http://webcast.cern.ch/
Organisation and financing
The lecture programmes are an initiative of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
CERN has an particular focus on sharing scientific knowledge with the education and research world.
Davideon is a co-operative project of the University of Groningen (RuG), the University of Amsterdam(UvA), Windesheim Hogeschool, SURF and the Dutch Institute for Sound and Images (NIBG). It is the sequel of Av@lon and is built around more or less the same concept, making avail-able a catalogue of streaming videos from the archive of the NIBG. However it has a slightly differ-ent focus. While Av@lon tested feasibility and technical implemdiffer-entation, Davideon is more about the didactical approach and value of the proposed technology and it’s usage. The main aim is to redesign courses in such a way that video can be integrated into the curriculum in a valuable way.
Technology
The streaming content of the Davideon catalogue is available in RealPlayer, MPEG, QuickTime and Media Player format. None of the clips are downloadable. All the user needs to watch the clips is a standard PC with a broadband type connection.
An important technical specification in an ‘archive’ databank-like project is the search methodolo-gy and the protocols for metadata specifications. The Davideon project participants considered several ways of storing, searching and working with the available content: including the VIP tools developed by the Telematics institute, the Virtual Cutter developed by the University of Groningen and also used in Av@lon, and the Amicitia public web access interface.
User group
The aim of the pilot was to integrate and adapt the curriculum so that it would make optimal use of video in education. Each of the three participating institutions adapted several courses for the Davideon pilot. The user group is thus specified and limited to those courses and their attendees.
Apart from the students, project participants also used the pilot to test the usability of streaming material from the teachers point of view taking into account their chosen pedagogical approach.
Pedagogy and methodology
The aim of the Davideon project is to develop a didactically useful integration of video into cours-es. The videos that are made available are selected on the basis of their relevance to a specific
DAVIDEON
URL http://www.davideon.nl/
MAIN CONTACT A.J.M. Rosendaal
ADDRESS RuG, centrum voor ICT en onderwijsletteren postbus 716
NL-9700 AS Groningen The Netherlands
E-MAIL A.J.M.Rosendaal@let.rug.nl
course and each course is developed with usage of video in mind. This means that they are intend-ed for use beyond simple illustration. Videos are integratintend-ed in Blackboard and students work on specific tasks with the available material. The content is not originally classroom related and is taken from NIBG. Because of the integration of the video material in Blackboard and the design of course specific usage, interaction between learners and the materials is possible.
Organisation and financing
The total budget for this pilot was € 675880 of which half is paid by the participating institutions and the other half is grant aided by SURF. Students participating in the courses did not have to pay for the streaming content (costs were carried by their institutions).
A specific aim of this project was to test the practical organisation of developing adapted courses, integrating the usage of video and the new role of the teacher when using this approach. This meant that training and implementation concepts had to be developed. Typical organisational aspects like co-operation between different partners were also assessed as developing working procedures will be necessary should this project be carried out on a larger scale. The ultimate goal is to make a catalogue of material and the accompanying didactical usage a national element of education in the Netherlands.
One specific aspect of the pilot was the selection of image material from the national archive. The archive was so huge that selection was absolutely necessary. This had to be done in a coordinated way so that useful content was extracted. Developing selection mechanisms and working practices to make use of this material is another practical objective of the pilot.
The copyright issue is also important in this case example and remains rather unclear.
D-Lecture is a project led by the Zentrum fur Multimedia in Lehre (ZMML), University of Bremen in cooperation with Bremen Briteline GmbH. D-Lecture is an online web environment where previous-ly recorded lectures are shown, together with accompanying materials like PowerPoint presenta-tions, documents and simulations.
Technology
The D-Lecture system uses RealPlayer for the streaming videos. For the other parts of the lecture Adobe Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Office and/or other standard software may be necessary to view the content. No specific PC requirements are necessary. Although a broadband type of connection is recommended, the streams are also available for 56kbs or dual ISDN. Bremen Briteline GmbH
D-LECTURE
developed the software for the integration of the different parts into one presentation environ-ment.
User group
The lectures are mainly intended for students at the Bremen University but are open for everyone.
Another target group are students abroad or students who cannot attend classes when they are taking place. With the D-Lecture system, students can hear and see courses, as well as receiving course documents like text material.
Pedagogy and methodology
D-Lecture aims to make courses available and individually usable for review outside the universi-ty. It is an example of capturing and archiving educational events where all the relevant learning materials can be found in one place. The individual user is independent in his or her learning and can decide to watch the entire lecture, parts of the lecture, slides and/or the accompanying docu-ments.
Evaluation of the pilot system by the students is positive and 71% of those asked said the D-Lecture system was a clear improvement in the learning offer, 75% of those asked regretted that the sys-tem was not available for all courses.
Organisation and financing
The University of Bremen developed D-Lecture in cooperation with Briteline GmbH as a pilot proj-ect during the 2001-2002 academic year. In 2003 the lproj-ectures were entirely redesigned. Students can use the D-Lecture system for free and it is open to anyone.
Funet TV is the joint development project of CSC and the Finnish universities. Its purpose is to pro-duce Internet networked multimedia services to the Funet network to support research and educa-tion activities in the Finnish universities. Funet TV contains several services; transmission of live video; videoconferencing and Video on-Demand material stored in media archives.
Technology
The Funet TV streaming media comes in various formats. Streaming videos can be Real, MPEG1, MPEG2 and QuickTime. The newest films however are MPEG4. Hardware requirements are a stan-dard PC with sound and video and an internet connection of sufficient capacity.
User group
Funet TV is a Finnish service, primarily aimed at the Finnish academic sector.
Pedagogy and methodology
The video-on-demand archive is searchable. Videos are not integrated in other applications or accompanied by other materials. Most of the time, only the videos are presented although in some cases you can also find a link to a web page with relevant information on that topic. The interaction is limited to start, stop and pause.
Organisation and financing
Funet TV co-operates with universities, learning and computing centres, virtual university projects, ISPs and content producers. They also have cooperation with software developers and manufactur-ers. Educational and scientific multimedia material is continuously added to the media archive, which is maintained at CSC.
Users can search and view the archived films for free.
FUNET TV
URL http://tv.funet.fi/index.jsp.en
MAIN CONTACT Matti Ihamuotila, Managing Director of CSC (Finnish IT Centre for science)
ADDRESS CSC – Scientific Computing Ltd PO Box 405
FIN-02101 Espoo Finland
E-MAIL helpdesk@csc.fi
The Hypervideo Application was developed in 1999 by the CDED, Maribor, Slovenia in cooperation with the University of Oldenburg, Germany, Interface Consult, Austria and the University of Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
This project is a hypervideo presentation of an engineering experiment on the magnetic suspen-sion system and is an example of an effective transfer of lectures and online exercises supported by the synchronized combination of real time video streaming with links to clips, sound, slides, text and static images.
Hypervideo as developed in this project is a form of streaming whereby the user can use hyperlinks within a video to find more information, a new video or a web site. Essentially hypervideo links work the same as hyperlinks but within a video environment, with so called clickable ‘hot spots’.
Technology
This Hypervideo application was accessible via a streaming client at the faculty and is a typical example of streaming in RealVideo format. A regular PC with colour display and a fast Internet con-nection is necessary. It was also available as a CD-Rom for use at home by students as most stu-dents in Slovenia have no access to fast Internet connections at home.
The application itself made use of SMIL and HTML. SMIL is a mark-up language that enables sequential timing of certain components within a multimedia environment and allows the author of the application to decide what and when each element of the application is presented.
User Group
The application was developed as a pilot project and intended for local teachers and learners with-in the Faculty of Electric Engwith-ineerwith-ing and Computer Science. 40 students from the faculty used the streaming application at home or at the University which showed an example of a magnetic sus-pension system. By clicking on hot spots they could find out more about parts of the content being shown. Although it was made for local use, it was also intended to show the project to a general international audience, therefore an English voice-over and subtitles are included.
Together with the application, in streaming format or stored on a CD-Rom for use at home, students also received accompanying materials about the experiment being shown, as well as some instruc-tional guidelines about how to use the application.